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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: just? I know not; but this I know, the world is cruel. Society refuses
to calm the woes itself has caused; it gives its honors to those who
best deceive it; it has no recompense for rash devotion. I see and
know all that. I can't reform society, but this I can do, I can
protect you, Marie, against yourself. This matter concerns a man who
has brought you trouble only, and not one of those high and sacred
loves which do, at times, command our abnegation, and even bear their
own excuse. Perhaps I have been wrong in not varying your happiness,
in not providing you with gayer pleasures, travel, amusements,
distractions for the mind. Besides, I can explain to myself the
impulse that has driven you to a celebrated man, by the jealous envy
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